Grayman Book Three: Vulnerability

By Michael Rizzo

Grayman chronicles a daring and disturbing experiment to decisively end the threat of global terrorism. A group of powerful corporate and political players lever a desperate world to create a multinational force of “surgical” strike teams, authorized to cross borders and pursue targets with impunity; armed with advanced weapons, technology and armor; and directed by a cutting-edge artificial intelligence. But more than simply employing high-tech military might, this new army is designed to fight a true “information war” by operating completely in the public eye, their missions crafted for maximum marketability, their operatives shaped into Hollywood-style action heroes.

The series focuses on the man being groomed to be the wired public’s greatest hero: Given the “stage name” Mike Ram, he’s charismatic, talented and damaged unknown, pushed by circumstance to become a merciless predator. Initially little more than a trauma-driven serial killer, he’s given a new identity and is re-programmed to kill on cue to satisfy the media’s thirst for violent and visible retribution against an equally vicious enemy. Ram quickly rises from being a murderer on the run to being an untouchably popular celebrity and global leader, as his every action plays out on the public stage.

In Book Three: Vulnerability, A terrorist mastermind holds the world hostage with a technology-destroying weapon, forcing Mike Ram into an odyssey of horror toward a devastating realization. Meanwhile, the omnipresent AI “Dee” is showing more and more independent initiative in pursuing its primary directive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Rizzo
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301513789

Michael Rizzo

In addition to writing dark speculative fiction, Michael Rizzo is a graphic artist (yes, all those covers are his), a martial scientist, a collector and frequent user of fine weaponry, and a pretty good cook. He continues his long, varied and brutal career as a mercenary social services consultant, trying to do good important work while writing about very bad things.His fiction series include Grayman and The God Mars. (The research he’s done for the Grayman series has probably earned him the attention of Homeland Security.)Check out his Facebook pages ("The Grayman Series" and "The God Mars Series") for lots of original art and updates.He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

Book preview

An old Hindu myth:

In ancient times, there was a festival, a gathering of all creatures, earthly and divine. It was held on a beach, at the edge of the great ocean. And it came to pass that the guests began to debate the vastness of the ocean: Was it possible for anyone to know its depth and breadth?

It happened that there was one celebrant: a man who was made of salt. He said to the others:

You can debate all you want, and get no answers. I will go and find out.

The man of salt dove into the water and immediately began to dissolve. He melted into the sea until there was nothing left of him.

It is said that, by becoming one with the ocean, he came to know its depth and breadth. Of course, he never returned.

1

July 4th 2023:

Dallas, Texas.

Antonin Zarovich:

Like a young girl, I wait for my suitor impatiently. Having prepared for him all day—having not slept the night before out of anticipation—all I have to do now is wait for him to arrive, to come for me.

So I sit. And I get up and down. And pace. And I keep going to the window, looking for any sign of his approach, even though I have better ways to know exactly where he is and how soon he will be here.

I try not to look like a nervous young girl. Or a scared old man. I do this for those that have stayed with me, so they will not fear, and then will not do what humans do when they fear that they will surely die. And because of their confidence in me, because of their faith, they very likely will die.

I try to look calm, serene, meditative. Just biding the minutes and hours in quiet, watching the progress of the summer sun as it rises, watching it heat the city, watching it drive people indoors as the ambient temperature climbs quickly to hover above one hundred degrees.

I absently touch the glass with my fingertips. It’s double-pane insulated, and this side is just barely cool, a testament to the efficiency of the hotel’s air conditioning. I expect that the outer pane, with the sun beating down directly on it, must be hot enough to hurt.

There is no movement in the parking lot, and very little traffic passes on the streets beyond. In fact, I cannot see anyone walking around out there—the city could well be entirely deserted, the cars running on automation to give the appearance of life.

People in this country have always been too spoiled to handle being outside in triple digit heat. Only the poor—who can find no other way—dare it, to toil under its heat for a measly wage. But even they know to start early, in the dark when it’s still cool (because the desert does get cold at night, too dry to hold the heat of the day), and be done and home to shelter before it gets as bad as it’s going to.

Even the poor here know how to find air conditioning. They could not begin to imagine what it’s like in some of the places I’ve been, places where people accept the desert, endure it. Places where it shapes their entire culture, even their faith.

As if I have a right to talk, standing in a Hilton penthouse suite in the middle of a dying oil capital, with a fantastic view of a hopelessly polluted desert of concrete and glass. I tell myself that it’s necessary—the setting, the view. I need this to be special in the ritual formality of true diplomats. Or of a young maiden of refined family awaiting her suitor.

I also need to see him coming.

Not that it will likely make any difference at all. But at least it will be a fine enough place to die.

2

Mike Ram:

The glass face of the building is almost invisible behind the nova glare of the Dallas sun reflecting off of it. You wonder if he planned the effect, calculating what time of day you would arrive against which suite he rented.

The summer heat makes this the slow season for tourists and conventions, so there’s plenty of parking in the main lot behind the hotel, even on the holiday, even close to the lobby. Despite this, you make sure to park right out in the middle of the lot, right below the suite you know he’s in, sliding your Black Car between a plastic Lexus and somebody’s vintage dinosaur of an SUV. You want him to see you coming.

And you’re in no hurry, reluctant to turn off the music. The local vintage satellite station is feeding a selection of indo-remakes of old alt rock, the stuff your parents called new wave when they were kids. You found an angry/bluesy piece with a hot harmonica that you remember from before you could remember: Missionary Man. And though it overtly refers to the evangelical kind, it had conjured much different images for you in your formative years. Images, perhaps, of what you have become.

Don’t mess with a Missionary Man.

You kill the music along with the car’s turbines, take one last look through the plexi windshield up the shimmering face of the building, and put your hat on against the light of day.

The heat blasts you like jet exhaust when you open the car door. It brings back deep memories—you grew up in a place like this—but now it all seems so alien, like it wasn’t your own life that the memory belongs to. That makes you smile. Because it wasn’t. The painfully shy little boy that grew up in the desert is dead.

You pull your coat around you like a cape—you’re wearing a wool fedora and a trench coat and it’s one-hundred-and-two degrees—and try to make it hide your guns.

Like that’s fooling anyone.

3

Antonin Zarovich:

He’s wearing his hat and coat—his Grayman costume. It’s expected, but somehow disappointing. At least he didn’t come wearing his Tactical Armor, a faceless helmet.

I watch him walk across the lot from his ridiculous car. He looks like something out of a bad action movie: Big gray coat and big gray hat striding like a loan gunslinger off to the climactic battle. The coat is a modified HAMAS Industries martyr-control model, all padded and armored in layers so that a terrorist field commander can keep a short leash on the suicide bombers he sends into crowded places and then survive the result himself by hiding behind it.

I also know where he got it: His first one was commandeered in the field, used against his enemies when he was still becoming what he is today—a work in progress. And in those terrible days he used it to become a symbol, to terrify the terrorists. The legend of the Grayman spread through the radical darknets, and they watched for his gray shadow like he was the boogieman, the reaper coming for them. And he was a monster: no rules, no mercy, only righteous rage.

The actual terror only lasted one bloody month, but even all these years later no one in the business has forgotten what that gray wraith did—some of it survives and circulates in archival video. And then the Grayman was gone, at least for a time.

When the archetype was reborn several years later, he was so much worse. And better. Because he was now Mike Ram, champion of UNACT, hero of democracy, executioner of evildoers. Angel and demon.

The original costume was lost to history, some say hopelessly soiled by his own blood on the day he died killing villains like us. The coat he’s wearing now was given to him—after he was remade into what he is now—by an Israeli General, a member of his Committee, who had apparently hoped to revive that symbol, now as a true global super-hero, champion of their new world order.

The coat’s shell is a special nano-weave, designed to withstand tearing by small shrapnel (it’s the under-layers that resist the more powerful penetrations and shock waves). It also repels fluids and semi-fluids, shaking off whatever gore might get sprayed onto it, allowing the wearer to walk away from whatever atrocity he’d just committed without drawing undue attention (and uncomfortable questions at the dry-cleaner’s). I expect it serves its current wearer very well in that capacity, keeping the blood of his deeds from clinging to him and marking him for what he is.

Under his coat—I can see as it flops open as he strides—is a black suit of lightweight UNACT armor. And the bulk of his favorite sidearm, slung low on his thigh like a gunslinger.

Under his hat, he is wearing a pair of dark-tinted interface glasses, so his dear friend the AI can better show him the world.

When he’s gone from sight into the lobby—coming right through the most public entrance, the blatant dramatist—I take the time to make myself another drink, and practice keeping my hands from shaking. I don’t want to look as scared as I feel. After all, I am trying to save the world.

I hear the first two shots reverberate through the building far below me.

4

Mike Ram:

You take a look at what you cannot see with your interface glasses.

Heat-sound and Terahertz imaging make the walls transparent, and show you six targets in the penthouse corridor, just based on the quick scan you manage to get as the elevator comes up. This is much fewer than you expected.

And there were only two waiting downstairs, who—despite raising their Fletchers when they saw you coming—seemed honestly surprised that you shot them. You had no other problems getting to the elevator.

You know he knew you were coming—most certainly knew exactly when as well—and still he’s apparently left himself with nothing significant in the way of defense. But he’s proven his ability to surprise you before, to do the unexpected. So you need to move quickly, to keep him unbalanced because he may not have expected you to just come in shooting, so there’s no time to really think about it now, because you certainly don’t want to give them any time to think.

You also know from your scan of the penthouse floor that they’ve got their guns leveled on the arriving elevator even before the doors open. They should have known better—most of your favorite tricks are the stuff of popular net clips and VR games. You’d love to see the look on their faces as they process the sight of the empty car, take maybe whole seconds to figure out the obvious, but timing is everything.

It took you a second-and-a-half longer than you’d anticipated to dissolve the lock on the maintenance hatch that got you from the roof of the elevator car to the roof of the hotel. That did give them plenty of time to rethink, to move, so now you’ll have to go looking for them again.

You sweep the scanning array built into your interface glasses down across the roof. The sun has baked the tar too hot for infrared to read through it, but Terahertz images form on the heads-up display in the lenses, placing the enemy for you again: six gunmen simultaneously frozen in a split-second of uncertainty behind their weapons—all of which appear to be only small arms, though they are likely loaded with armor-piercing rounds. So you set the shaped charge on the roof right above the rear-most two of them, trying not to make any noise as you run in your big coat and forty-five pounds of armor.

The charge is designed to take out tanks. It punches a hole through the steel and conduit and composite roof and sprays molten copper and the liquefied bits of what was in its way down into the corridor in a pyroclastic storm. You give it one full second for the flash to fade, sink the hook of your secondary rappeller into the roof, and run and jump and drop down through the hole that you’ve just made in a very expensive hotel, your rappeller cable set for the fastest drop that won’t break your legs.

The blast shredded two of them, and took the wind out of two more. But you don’t want to give them time to figure out that you’re smack in the middle of the cloud of scalding plaster dust (especially if they have bullets that can penetrate your armor), so you need to use the Benelli first—the car-bomb buster that Abbas gave you.

Fresh and clear heat-sound images form heads-up in your glasses, letting you see them before they can see you—but once you start shooting, they’ll know where you are. You put a 25mm spin-armed grenade into the one closest to the elevator, and blindly throw yourself sideways through the door of one of the suites as the blast catches them, using the mass of your armor to break through the locks. Thankfully, the floor plan graphics you loaded were accurate, and the door is exactly where you expected it to be.

The hallway explodes just as you leave it, tumbling like a sloppy drunk into a thankfully-vacant sitting room. You hear shooting—the rattle of machine pistols—and rounds tear through the walls just over your head.

You trade the Benelli for your automag, and get up to answer them.

In your glasses, you can see them through the walls.

Point and squeeze.

5

Antonin Zarovich:

There are two explosions within seconds of each other, close enough to rattle the entire suite like a car-crash. And then the real shooting starts. The sparseness and desperateness of it tells how bad it must be out there: three machine pistols spit incontinently. Only three. It’s amazing nothing comes through the walls and into this suite, but then that executive security upgrade did cost a small fortune.

Then comes the deeper, more patient booming I’ve heard before, answering them. Three shots, each one leisurely paced, followed by a silence like a vacuum.

My one remaining bodyguard—the only one inside the suite with me—levels his weapon at the finely-crafted solid oak double entry. I try to tell him not to bother, I want to tell him to run (though I know he would be unwilling to do either), but then the doors blow straight into him, slamming him back over the sofa and through the designer coffee table.

And then the gray coat and hat comes through the smoking hole it’s made, levels its ludicrous choice of a sidearm, and blasts a single round through my protector’s face as he tries to get up.

I didn’t even hear the shot, not really, but there’s a ringing in my ears that’s almost crushing my skull.

That monstrous pistol turns on me then, slowly and smoothly. I don’t move even though I’m sure of what will happen next. But then it doesn’t. Instead, his free hand reaches up and pulls off his interface glasses, lets me see his eyes, his face.

He wants me to see him. Maybe even as much as I want to see him. Maybe there is still a chance to save the world after all.

Please, I try. Can’t we behave like civilized human beings just…

6

Mike Ram:

There are three rounds left in the automag.

He’s just standing there in his usual prissy white-on-white designer suit, smug and cool, like he owns the world. And his voice—at least what you can hear of it with all the ringing in your ears from the blasts and the gunfire without the benefit of your helmet to reduce it—starts into its usual seductive purr, trying to disarm you, to diffuse you. Trying to take control.

So you take it from him first, not at all interested in anything he has to say.

Your hand reaches straight out at him with the gun like a preacher driving the devil out of some poor sinner.

Three rounds, but you can’t really hear them. They kick him around and slam him back into the three-quarter-length window behind him that shatters into a crystal web but doesn’t give way, his white suit going all red and leaving more red all over the broken glass as he melts into a heap on the floor and starts to leak profusely all over the polished hardwood flooring.

The gun is locked open and empty in your hand. You don’t bother to reload it.

Don’t mess with a Missionary Man.

Then you let yourself out the way you came in.

7

July 4th 2024.

Officer Harry Novins, California Highway Patrol:

One-hundred-and-twenty is what the external thermosensor says it is outside the cruiser, at the midpoint of Death Valley on I-10. The sign says there’s a town here but there’s never been more than an abandoned trailer and a few not-so-neat rows of dead palm trees since I was a kid. Probably some idiot developer’s dead dream—I never did find out. But it gives me a patch of dirt driveway off the highway just far enough to make the desert-tan interceptor invisible, especially if you’re going too fast to get a good look. But not far enough off that I can’t track both lanes with the laser.

I think the same thing I think every time I sit here: Helluva place to get stuck. If getting stuck out here were much of a possibility anymore. The Fly-Wi hybrids all run cool and efficient, and even the straight fossil-burners have better cooling systems and run-flats now. And if worse came to worse, everybody and their toddler has cell and netlink. So the only thing I’m out here for most days is quota.

No, it’s not even quota. Satellite could handle the speeders, but they can’t see the satellites. But everybody drives real safe when they can see the Law.

The traffic count is well below norm—everybody with a life is sticking close to civilization and gearing up for whatever’s going to keep my urban counterparts running all night, between all the drunks and fireworks-induced brushfires and shitheads shooting guns up into the air. I remember the cleanup last year after an expensive Beemer went off the road by El Centro, went airborne and got cut in half hitting a bridge. Killed a whole family. Happy Fourth.

It’s still early, still before noon, and so far everyone’s been good (or seen me and slowed down). And I’m thinking I may be able to find someone to cover the end of my shift so I can make it home and take the kids to the fireworks…

Then the roar comes clear through the plexiscreen over the quiet hum of the interceptor’s engine and the soft breeze of the AC. I can almost tell by the sound of the banger engine what it is before I see it. And I almost don’t, with the glare it throws at me with all its chrome and the triple-lacquered paint job. Still, it’s a sight: an ancient Shelby ponycar in pristine condition, right down to the three-oh-two thrumming clear and strong under the hood, flying like the wind. And I don’t need the laser to tell me that some people never learn.

I kick up a dust-storm as I tear out after him. The Shelby must be pushing 150, but the interceptor’s hydrogen turbines can outgun any old fossil eight-banger, even one as sweet as this. It takes maybe all of fifteen seconds to get right up behind him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Maybe somehow he thinks running without a plate or tranceptor code (which he isn’t—probably some rich prick pulled an old toy out of his garage collection to relive a youth he couldn’t afford when he was actually young) is somehow going to get him away from me.

But then, he doesn’t seem like he’s trying.

He lets me slide right up along side him, like we’re out for a Sunday cruise. Lets me get a look at him: smug prick of a blonde-and-tanned richboy. He probably does have a garage the size of a strip-mall chock full of toys like this. Rich enough not to give a damn how much the ticket is so he’s actually grinning at me. Makes me think of lots of things I could make him cough up six-figure bail for. And then he waves at me like we’re old buds…

The next part comes too fast to make any sense of, but my gut twists up ‘cause I know it’s just too bad to make sense of, because everything goes dead in the interceptor all at once. Lights, screens, uplink: all dark in a flash so fast I didn’t see it. Then it takes me two more seconds of numb dumb shock to realize the engine is dead too, and everything else, including the joystick steering and brakes, at a hundred-and-fifty.

For good or bad, the transmission grabs and jerks, dragging me into a skid but thank God the road and the wheels were straight. Just not straight enough. The next grab throws the interceptor across the dirt median, and I’m thanking God again that there’s no oncoming traffic and no mountains to hit or cliffs to fly off of, and the harness holds me down as I get bounced all over creation as I’m off the opposite side of the road and into the desert scrub. But the airbags don’t blow, and I get the living shit kicked out of me in the blink of an eye.

When it’s all done and quiet, I can’t see out the plexiscreen for all the dust I’ve thrown up, but the cab’s held together and mostly I seem to have too, and that’s about all that’s right in the world. Because nothing else is working, not even my cell, not even my damn watch. I can’t even open the doors or roll down a window. And with the plexi, I don’t dare shoot it out this close (yeah I thought of that too).

When the dust clears enough to see outside, I’m half in a ditch about a hundred yards off the highway, just far enough to make the tan hull of the interceptor invisible to anybody cruising by, even at legal speeds.

And then I notice how quickly it’s getting hot and stuffy in here, sealed in a Plexiglas shell in a hundred-and-twenty degree sun…

8

September 18th 2024:

Transcript of DHS interview: Alex Garcia, Phoenix, Arizona:

Traffic’s so ugly out there, flies would go blind. That’s what the DJ on Country 104 was saying, just before it all went to hell. I remember ‘cause it made me laugh despite how pissed I was—about the traffic, I mean. It’s always bad near the Stack, but I blew off early to try to miss the worst. Guess everybody else in town got the same idea.

What did I see? Back end of about a million cars all going nowhere and not fast. Except for the rich shits in the ExpressNet lanes. I was looking that way when it happened, I guess. Pissing myself off thinking about how much I bust my ass and no matter what I can barely keep my old shitty Chevy on the road and how much I have to pay in pollution waivers every year. Thinking about how eighty-five percent of the people in this town make minimum wage and can’t make rent, then get to watch every day as those snotty fucks whip by us at a hundred-and-fifty, their eighty-grand-and-up Fly-Wi cars locked into Freeway Control, the DOT mainframe keeping ‘em all neatly bumper-to-bumper, shuttling them off on their private off-ramps when they get to where they tell their damn cars they need to get to so much faster than the rest of us that they’re willing to pay the monthly access fee that’s almost as much as my rent. Then the lazy fucks just sit back and let the X-Net do the driving for ‘em.

No, I guess I wasn’t looking at ‘em just the exact second it started. Too distracted trying to keep myself from getting killed. No—wait—I did get distracted, I mean a real head turner, just before that: a classic black Mustang Shelby V-8 with the sweetest chrome and lacquer job I seen outside a car show comes purring up past me, weaving through all the other traffic like it’s NASCAR. And I’m wishing I was him when all the shit starts happening real fast.

Okay: First I see the cars in front of me lose their lights and then start losing speed and weaving, all going dead pretty much at the same time. I admit I was pushing the speed limit a little like everybody does who don’t want another car up his ass, so I got no time to brake. I start weaving like NASCAR, only not near so smooth, and worse because all the shitheads in their dead cars are really starting to lose it, all over the road like a buncha DUI’s. I guess I was lucky to have the old Chevy that day—probably one of the only vehicles that didn’t get fried—I was still running mostly just fine (or about as good as it gets in a POS like that, you know?).

Except for the stereo. I’m not sure when I lost that. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to what happened to the tunes with all the smashing sounds.

Yeah, I guess I did hear it first before I looked. Can’t describe how bad it sounded: screaming and crunching and banging and crushing like you couldn’t believe. That’s when I think, Oh shit if something killed all these cars on the regular freeway, what happens to the ExpressNet and all those fucking fly-by-wires? Quad-redundant safeties are built in to keep wrecks from happening if any one car goes down, or even if the X-Net itself crashes, but what if a couple-hundred cars AND the ‘Net all go down at once? Especially with those flimsy-ass plastic game controllers they have instead of real steering wheels and pedals. I always wondered what would happen if all that remote-control shit just died on you at a hundred-plus. Now I guess I know.

I could see it out of the corner of my eye as I’m trying to get to the shoulder without getting nailed myself: all them expensive hybrids smashing and flipping and tearing apart. Plastic and glass and metal and Jesus maybe I think an arm or a leg flying all over on the other side of the dividers. I saw one or two get airborne, just like in a movie. Hundred-and-fifty fucking miles an hour and suddenly nobody’s driving.

What was the last count I heard on the news? Two-thirty-something vehicles totaled? Any update on the death toll?

No, I didn’t see that Shelby anywhere. Nothing that old fried, so if he didn’t crash into nobody I’ll bet he was probably hell-n’-gone…

9

October 10th 2024:

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Burke, Tactical Operations Commander, UNACT North American Operations:

It’s dark and raining like a motherfucker and it’s too damn chilly and the mission is bullshit—stupidly dangerous bullshit—and Michael’s in a mood.

Like Michael’s not always in a mood, especially before one of these. And that’s the way they need him: wound up and ready to perform and not question the reason or morality of what they want him to do.

But between tonight’s Sanction specs and what happened in Phoenix last month still the big frustrating mystery (though nobody official’s calling it a terrorist attack yet), trying to get a sense of what’s going on in his head right now is just a little too scary to do with the lights out.

My eyes can’t really make him out: He’s standing in front of the foot-thick plexi that make up all of the very few windows in this place, doing some Zen-thing contemplating the rain with all the lights off.

I’ll never get how you can drink before one of these.

I thought it, didn’t mean to say it. But tonight’s op is pissing me off more righteously than usual. He doesn’t say anything about my comment, but I think I can see his reflection smile just a little. The ugly smile.

I try to lighten the mood:

’It was a dark and stormy night.’

Madelene L’Engle.

What?

Author who actually started a novel with that line.

I thought it was Snoopy.

His smile gets a little warmer, a little more human. Too bad we don’t have the time for it.

Shouldn’t you be suited by now? I wish I hadn’t said that either. But somebody has to. Dropship’s probably already hot. Two hours ‘til insert. You’ll give Dee a seizure if you’re late.’

He doesn’t move for a few seconds. Then he drags one last time off the beer and sets it down on the sill like he’s leaving it on somebody’s grave. It’s still mostly full: just a few savored swallows to get the juices flowing without getting too ‘raqed to shoot straight. (The real drinking starts when the op ends.)

In the dark, I hear him pull on his armor. I’ve never stopped to think how it sounded before, to put it all on: how hard and heavy, all the rustling and clicking and snapping. And even though I can’t really see him in the dark, I can feel him go away, sealed up inside that synthetic shell, like when he steps into it, he steps out of the world.

You sure you don’t want me to come along? I ask him though I know the answer. Just for the ride?

They specified a solo. His voice sounds far away. You know why. Besides, you hate Detroit.

I can hear him work the action of his penis-envy excuse for a sidearm, his Big Stupid Gun. It’s the last thing he does before he lets himself out. He doesn’t say goodbye.

10

Colonel Michael Ram, Commanding Officer, UNACT North American Operations:

It was a dark and stormy night…

And it is.

It’s an hour-and-forty-five to Detroit, and you were supposed to be reviewing the target stats on your heads-up, but it always makes you sick to try to read in a moving vehicle. So you let the sims run on your visor and just ignored them, closed your eyes and enjoyed the gentle vibrations of the dropship’s VTOL fans, and the not-so-gentle wind as you asked Dee to fly you with the drop bay doors open, so when you do open your eyes and look past your heads-up you can see the few stars and the web of lights of civilization passing below you.

Not that your lack of last-minute studying will matter. You’ve had the faces of your prey memorized since yesterday when the Sanction cleared, and Dee will insist on holding your hand the whole time anyway.

Dee invoked Sanction to commandeer the helipad of a local hospital, giving you a reasonably close yet discreet landing zone. The car was waiting for you just outside the street-level freight entrance: not your Black Car, just a standard contract sedan, which is disappointing (even though you know you’ll have no need of your special toy tonight).

Ten minutes gliding through midnight traffic to the target, and you’ve got time to spare. Despite this, the news crews are already waiting, and are disturbingly less than discreet. Three vans with their network’s logos are double-parked around the block from the target. And even with the rain pouring over your windshield, you can see them suiting up and rigging their eyecams.

"They do know this is a Bio, don’t they?" someone chimes in over your link, watching the journalists put on their useless body armor. You track down the street and catch sight of the semi hiding the bio-team in a parking lot a block away. On your heads-up, Dee feeds you a battle map that places the containment team as well as the dozen Tactical suits trying to stay invisible but ready to crash.

Then you take in the target itself: a glaring neon sculpture of a jester ripples in the rain, with the cursive Harlequin Club flashing beneath it.

Another voice chimes in to request your status: Richards, who sounds as irritated and jadedly incredulous as Matthew did about the whole affair.

You reply by shutting down the car and sliding out into the chilly downpour, pulling up the collar of the overcoat that poorly shrouds what’s underneath it. You tilt your fedora down to better veil the slight glow of the heads-up display that bleeds out from behind your glasses. Then you draw your weapon to get the attention of the newsmen, who come almost sprinting down the sidewalk at you, cameras wired into their own awkward eyewear.

Enter the Grayman.

Pointing your gun at them manages to stop them in their tracks. A somewhat vulgar gesture, but they need to be reminded how serious this is, how potentially lethal, despite the proximity of the bio-team. Containment is far from guaranteed, despite what Dee and the Committee have to say, and the antigens ready to inoculate anyone potentially exposed won’t be very effective against bullets. So you wave them away with the barrel of your gun. They back off, however reluctantly.

Someone is griping on-link about having the media presence onsite and why can’t they be satisfied with the armor video feed. But armor video will only show them what you see. They wouldn’t get any good footage of you in action, and that’s what this is supposed to be all about.

Your own fault, you remind yourself, for keeping so unavailable since Dallas last year. Since the Philippines. Your fans miss you. So the Committee authorizes a ratings-friendly show-op and gets the Press on board and puts you in costume and shoves you out onto the stage.

Tonight’s episode: Mike Ram versus the Bio-Terrorists.

One last time, Dee feeds you flash of the club’s layout, complete with statistical projections on where to expect your targets and field-of-fire estimates. You’d think it’s already happened, as far as Dee is concerned.

The last thing you get is a set of reminder images of who it is you’re supposed to shoot. Then you conceal the automag down in the cloak of your overcoat and go deal with the doormen.

They start to scan your ID and instead get a warrant-feed from UNACT Sanction Authority to get the fuck out of your way about the same time that the club’s T-Net facial-recognition scanners—and their own rather widening eyes—confirm who you are. Despite their engineered muscle mass, they know when to duck. Three wired newsmen slide not-so discreetly in through the gap in your wake.

The retro-club is a disorienting holo-show that tries to mimic the effects of the quaint old rave drugs. Swirling and strobing colors bathe the mostly thirty-to-fifty-something mostly Caucasian crowd that hops and lurches in vintage goth-black and silly wannabe fetish-gear to music that was old when you were too young to remember. There is something soothing about the music, though, despite the hopeless angst and anger of the lyrics.

You pan the crowd of nine-hundred-plus, letting Dee sift their faces for you, trying not to stand still long enough to be noticed, either by the crowd or by anyone that really matters. Thank god for alcohol.

Dee counts down precious time in the periphery of your heads-up: Nine minutes and forty-two seconds left in the estimated incubation phase. More than enough time to find and kill four people, then get the bio-team in to seal their bodies before the engineered viruses they carry go contagious on schedule. Assuming Dee’s intel is as good as it usually is.

And you find yourself wondering again what kind of a human being volunteers to carry a timed-release contagion, then plants themselves in a public place and parties away the last hour or so of their lives and maybe hundreds or thousands of others. You hope that such insight would help you pick them out of this crowd, preferably before they see you first and—realizing they’ve probably been contained—just start shooting at whoever’s handy.

As usual, Dee spots them before you do. And as usual, you blame this on the fact that Dee makes it a habit to give you mug-shot images of your targets that look like slavering sociopaths instead of surprisingly average-looking human beings, no more hopeless and desperate than any of the other nine-hundred plus in here drowning themselves in cheap beer and well-drinks while trying to stave off middle age by finding someone new to have safe sex with.

You’d think maybe they’d seem somewhat more urgent about this than the average patron, knowing how little time they have left. But they’re just huddled around an out-of-the-way booth in the somewhat sound-buffered talkers section beyond the dance floor at the rear of the club (designed for the people who actually value their hearing), buying another round for the somewhat under-clothed women you take to be pushing-middle-age-trying-to-be-twenty-again that they’re awkwardly pawing and chatting up. Maybe they’re just as bad at this as everyone else, you consider. Maybe knowing you’re about to die doesn’t give you any superhuman self-confidence at all. Or maybe they’re just not used to the booze, despite the lengths that the hide-in-plain-sight Wabs go through to break their taboos and fit in with the rest of the Infidels.

And then they see you coming.

One of them does, anyway. It takes him more than two seconds through the alcohol for his eyes even to go wide, then almost another full second to sputter a warning to his comrades and go for his gun—the plastic and nanocarbon Fletcher that slipped through the club’s weapons detectors so nicely, despite the hundred caseless dart-rounds crammed into its magazine.

Too late for him. Dee had long since diagramed your firing solution and projected it over your vision in the heads-up. And while you doubt the Fletcher can hurt you much, there are nine-hundred-plus unarmored civilians crowded in here, and any one of those flechette rounds could easily slice through three or four of them at a time. So you take what Dee tells you is a clean shot and you raise your automag between the dancing bodies and you fire. Once.

The one who saw you coming gets slammed back into the booth like a truck hit him. The second is already trying to get up, hand going into his coat, when your next shot whips his head back so hard you know it broke his neck, not like it makes any difference. The third is just staring straight ahead in numb shock and the fourth is trying to shove the woman he was pawing off of him so he can get out of the booth and get his gun out. The dancers have all begun screaming and have made a space around you, repulsed by the deafening blasts of the automag like it has physically shoved them back, the flash of its long flame out-competing the strobing club lights.

Number four gets his pistol in his hand but it catches on the table as he drunkenly tries to raise it, with his date still hanging around his neck out of dumb terror like an albatross. It keeps him from getting clear of the confining booth, but her proximity makes you take your time in the chaos before sending your third shot through his chest, throwing them both back into the booth. Blood that looks black in the club’s lighting sprays over them both, so you’re not quite sure if you didn’t graze her or worse. And you consider the idea that having his tainted blood injected into her by a shared bullet would arguably be worse than getting shot by you, the hero.

The last one is still staring dumbly straight ahead when he finally realizes that all his comrades are dead. Then he tries to stand, but he’s blocked in by their bodies and by the screaming cowering blood-decorated women. And when his hands go into his jacket it looks more like he’s checking himself for bullet wounds than reaching for a weapon. But you don’t take the chance and you put a round through him from armpit to armpit. He never even looked at you once.

But now everybody else is, at least those who aren’t preoccupied with crawling and clawing to get away. Then Dee taps into the club’s PA and turns up the lights, replacing the music with an authoritative drone about Sanction and how they are all safe now as armored Tacticals descend from everywhere and start securing the doors. Next will come the even more reassuring announcement that everyone in the building will be quarantined until they can get shot up with antigen, and stripped and scrubbed of any flying bodily fluids.

You do your part by pointing your gun up at the ceiling, then putting it away, to try to assure them that you’re all done killing people right now, and then you remember to peel off the hat and glasses so they can all see who you are and feel safe and secure. That was the whole point, Dee insisted, trying to rationalize this stupidity: that if it was necessary to expediently neutralize four human beings in a crowded public place by slipping in and gunning them down without giving them any chance at all to get off a shot, then it would best be done by someone the crowd would instantly recognize and respond favorably to: A hero. From TV and the Net.

But you can’t imagine that the look in your eyes right now is even remotely comforting. Still, the news crew has managed to stay right up on top of you despite all the screaming and running chaos, and you give them a look that you hope isn’t remotely comforting and you hope they got what they wanted because there’s only going to be one take.

11

October 11th.

Matt Burke:

Six a.m. and it’s already the top story on every news site.

"…confirms that it was Mike Ram himself that carried out the Sanction on the four terrorists, who have been positively linked to the defunct Zarovich terror organization. The two men taken into custody last week while trying to cross the Canadian frontier provided the details of the bio-terror plan, after it was discovered that they were carrying an engineered virus which was timed to become contagious only after the terrorists had placed themselves in a highly populated location. It has also been confirmed that the terrorists were armed with illegal undetectable firearms, intending to open fire in the crowded nightclub in the event that they were discovered.

As you can see in these videos, Colonel Ram, slipping into the crowd alone, was able to get close enough to neutralize all four of the identified terrorists before they could return fire. The club was immediately sealed by a UNACT bio-response team, which administered antiviral agents to everyone present as a precaution. UNACT representatives wish to assure the public that blood samples taken from the terrorists indicate that the virus they carried had not become contagious before they could be contained…

They play the video series again for the fifth time: four different angles of four men getting shot down as they enjoy a round of microbrew. The last one looks like he wet himself. With the parental filters off, I get to see all the unedited glory of it. That fucking gun of his makes a shocking mess, but that’s the whole point: the cinematic aspect.

Hell, we’ve bumped the Phoenix ExpressNet disaster to a sidebar story.

Pop-ups let everyone know that the videos will be downloadable as a VR construct by tomorrow, and another plug-in for our popular gaming series will be out for sale by the end of the week. The site must be overloaded with requests already.

Then Richards comes up on cue, giving the official Committee line and making excuses for why Michael himself has failed to appear to publicly comment.

Colonel Ram is still being evaluated due to his proximity to the contaminants, though we are confident at this point that he is in no danger…

Bullshit. That woman who wound up wearing most of that one dumb bastard’s heart and lung got cut loose from Bio after two hours—though I expect she’ll be in therapy long enough to buy some PTSD therapist a new Lexus.

Mike Ram, as usual, has locked himself in his suite and I expect is well on the way to getting numb enough to come down from this one. Though I doubt there’s enough beer in the world to do that anymore.

12

Mike Ram:

PLAY.

"The media itself has always been the most devastating weapon of the true terrorist. With this tool, the violence done to a relative few impacts the entire world. What would otherwise be a random and fanatic act of mass-murder paralyzes entire societies, cripples international economies. This is because the media, by its very nature, readily and repeatedly brings the images of such violence to everyone, making everyone victim to it. They do it because it’s news, but more so because it brings ratings…"

PAUSE.

Your first big speech in front of the UN. It was supposed to be a secret, a closed session, a warm-up before the movers and shakers behind creating UNACT put on their big public push. But then someone—probably Zarovich—uploaded a bootleg to the public newsnets and got everybody talking. And scared. Not of you—they liked you, at least according to the opinions polls—but of what their governments seemed to have in mind for them: dragging them all into a renewed and re-envisioned war on terrorism under one flag.

PLAY.

"For almost half-a-century now, the ‘terrorists’ have publicly and repeatedly proven that there is no completely effective defense. So if we are really going to fight the terrorist, then we must be sure to do it in their own arena, using their own most effective weapon. We must fully invite the media to document our victories, to share intimately in our actions. Then those actions will become the tangible justice of the terrorized world. Through us, the vulnerable public will feel that they can really fight back. Through us, they will no longer be terrorized. And through us, terrorist and innocent victim alike will come to know what the New World Order is really going to be…"

PAUSE.

You were raving. But you did believe. At least you remember believing. Or maybe that was just more programming.

PLAY.

"Imagine: For every bombing or shooting or contamination or infection they attempt, we perform our own sensational act. And it won’t be the sterile, impersonal air strikes that have proven so disappointing and politically costly. And it won’t be the sloppy, expensive occupations that destroy countries, leave tens of thousands dead, and leave hundreds of thousands more standing as easy targets to an opportunistic few. Instead, we will confront the terrorist face-to-face, cameras rolling, and give the viewing public the personal justice they so desperately crave, without the risk of tragic collateral damage. No dead innocents and destroyed neighborhoods. No painfully long lists of casualties. Nothing to feed the naysayer. Only surgical justice…"

PAUSE.

You look so much younger then, even though it’s only been four years. But back then you had a new face, a new identity. Fewer scars. And nowhere near so much blood on your hands.

PLAY.

This is a new kind of war we are in, ladies and gentlemen of the Council: It is a war for public approval, a war of image more than tactical victories, a war to win—and hold—the popular media, to command the headlines. To borrow a term from that media: It is a Ratings War.

STOP.

Rough. It was a rough cut. A dress rehearsal to give civilized human beings a look at you, to see what they would make of you, the manufactured hero. It wasn’t supposed to go global, not until the big Charter Amendment debate coming up on United Nations Day. But that got derailed, not by your speech, but by you killing somebody on live television. Speaking of…

Find the file. Then open another beer. Your fingers still work…

PLAY.

The Global War on Terror: otherwise known to popular history as twenty years of bloody tragedies and politically devastating fiascos: New York, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Spain, Columbia, Jerusalem, Kashmir, Chechnya... I doubt anybody here really wants me to go on… And despite whatever ‘tactical’ or political victories you’ve tried to claim from your efforts, the Media has consistently preferred to rub your noses in your shortfalls, your errors, your vulnerabilities, your unintentional atrocities…

One week later: Now you’re speaking in front of the General Assembly and you’re on camera on purpose, spreading the Gospel of the United Nations Action Committee on Terrorism. You can see Richards—your de-facto but figurehead CO—squirming in the cheap seats, wishing you’d just shut up, even though he knows they’re actually buying you. Watching this now, three years later, you know how he feels.

"Twenty years of radical restrictions on almost every aspect of our society and commerce in the name of increased security… and still there is no real defense. Even with all the hundreds of billions thrown into screening technology, global surveillance and intimidating security, they always find a new way—or often, a humiliatingly old way—to hurt us. And the Media will always be there when that happens. And through the Media, the world will watch you as you so desperately try to do the same things over and over again to try to prevent what you cannot completely anticipate…"

You got to review the polls yourself: the overwhelming majority was hanging on your every word, buying without question. Because you sold them. You sold them a righteous war.

"That means a new kind of intelligence and a new kind of soldier. Tanks and planes and smart bombs and satellites and warships are all fine tools, but they are not effective where we need them to be. It’s been decades since our enemies have gathered in numbers and in locations that would make those weapons effective. This is because they learned that lesson far more quickly than we could adapt—they learned to embed themselves into environments we couldn’t afford to use our precious arsenals in, and then they dared us to come after them. What we need, ideally, is to be able to locate and cut the terrorist out of highly populated areas quickly and efficiently without incurring civilian casualties, or risking unacceptable losses of our own troops. We also need to be able to fight the terrorist face-to-face, so we can confirm our accuracy and effectiveness immediately, instead of trying to positively